Anarchism and Communalism: The defeat of the Commune and the rise of communal anarchism

This paper examines nineteenth-century anarchist evaluations of the 1871 Paris Commune and three post-Commune defences of commune organisation to conceptualise anarchist communalism. The argument is that anarchists characterised the Paris Commune as a defeat and that a generation of post-Commune anarchists defended commune organisation as the revolutionary aspiration in need of articulation. I use Albert Camus’ idea of defeat as the pacification of a noble cause and Christopher Hill’s theorisation of ideation shift to develop the conception of defeat. I discuss the work of Peter Kropotkin, Gustav Landauer and Rudolf Rocker to present the account of commune organisation. By showing how each used Marx’s Civil War in France as a foil, I relate the perception of the Paris Commune’s defeat to the rejection of state socialism and the defence of anarchist communalism.</p

Kropotkin and the anarchist case for penal abolition

This chapter examines the anarchist case for abolition by analysing the Peter Kropotkin’s In French and Russian Prisons (1887), perhaps the most influential historical critique. Using themes of environment, culture and social relationships, I discuss his account, explain his scepticism about reform and explain why he concluded that the only sensible answer to the question ‘are prisons necessary?’ was ‘no’. The final section follows the trajectory of two lines of Kropotkin’s abolitionist thesis in anarchist thought. The first ‘environmental’ strand focuses on the systemic injustices that incentivise wrongdoing and the second ‘ethical’ thread emphasises the faultiness of the concept of crime. The argument is that both underwrite the anarchist case for prison abolition.</p

Health risk management along urban wastewater-irrigated vegetable value chains of LMICs: ensuring that opportunity, capability and motivation needs are identified

This is a conference paper presented at the 14th IWA International Conference on Water Reclamation and Reuse, Cape Town, South Africa, 16th - 20th March 2025.</p

Women poets, male publishers: Myth vs. market in post-1960s Britain

Key features  • The first history of British poetry publishers and their (re)discovery of women poets, from the 1960s onwards  • Sheds new light on influential men who controlled the publication of poetry, and the women poets they published  • Illuminates the changes in the ways poetry publishing has been funded in the UK, leading to more diversity  • Draws on extensive work in neglected archives and oral history interviews with key figures of the British literary landscape  • Offers a new model of scholarship in hybrid archives (comprising paper and born-digital documents)  • Written in a clear, engaging style for anyone interested in the business of poetry</p

'Effing Awful!’: developing audio representation as a medium for conveying people's experiences of flooded homes

Although the concept of loss of home is well documented in disaster research, discussions of people’s experiences and vulnerabilities are normally presented in written or visual form, often adhering to established practices. This paper aims to reposition this bias by engaging participants in the creation of an audio-based representation of their experiences of the 2019 flooding in Doncaster, UK. It is based on data from a residential area situated next to the river Don. Drawing on theories of home, disaster literature, sound design, musical composition and music psychology, the research explores the minutiae of the spoken word and the characteristic ambient sounds from each of the flooded locations. By using contemporary recording and editing technology, the work presents the individual narratives as a series of thematic audio vignettes. In this setting, multiple facets of speech are manipulated alongside melodic and ambient sonic materials, deployed to engage the listener and to promote empathy and understanding. The study uses text-based thematic analysis in parallel with audio analysis of voice, timbre, sound and the prosodic elements of speech to provide an additional data set. It highlights how the participants’ experiences are reflected in their relationships with state responders, the local community, landlords within the post-disaster rebuilding experience, both physically and psychologically. It also exposes some of the factors that affect vulnerability and resilience, along with the importance of community spirit. It draws an intricate audio web that represents the complexity and intersectionality of the experience of flooding. The study is imbricated with the life experiences and local knowledge of the lead researcher, a long-time resident of the area. It analyses and represents the findings from a unique, subtle and unintrusive perspective. The audio output from the research – a soundscape composition – is designed to push the boundaries of representation and to evidence the researcher’s use of Creative Analytic Practice. It is not aimed solely for the cognoscenti: its academic qualities lie in its design, development, rationale and in its evaluation as an alternative form of representation. Its uses, however, go beyond this realm, reaching back within the communities whence it came and embodying participant feedback which is aligned with the researcher’s creative compositional contribution.</p

Advancing art–science collaboration through a framework of play: What is the purpose of generating hand-drawn representations of technologically advanced, high-resolution image-data?

Today’s scientists depend on advanced imaging and microscopy techniques as scientifically accurate forms of representation and developments in advanced imaging and microscopy are altering how we perceive and comprehend images. The focus of this paper is a discussion of how images of scientific data are generated by artists in distinction to scientists. Since 2010, a central part of my drawing practice has involved contributing to advanced imaging and microscopy research projects. I wanted to discover if and how an artist-researcher can contribute to interdisciplinary approaches in advanced imaging and microscopy by working as one of the research team. I conducted research to find out how an artist-researcher might contribute to new interdisciplinary methods in advanced imaging and microscopy and introduced play as a disruptive concept to trigger a reactionary response to scientific method. Discussion centres on a collaboration at the University of Nottingham Medical School in the Department of Life Science which happened over several years. The drawings illustrate how non-standard visualization techniques complement biomedical data. In outline, I suggest artists should be given access to scientific labs and work with scientists as part of the team to break down disciplinary barriers, and to generate new understanding. This body of work aims to elevate drawings status as a meaningful contributor to cross-disciplinary collaboration. </p

'Wet Paint 2': Visual culture in a changing Britain - a roundtable debate

Towards the end of 2014 the previous editor of Visual Culture in Britain invited a variety of authors to contribute a page or two to a roundtable discussion on a variety of political and cultural events and changes. We solicited contributions from representatives of the British Universities, the Museum sector and Research Centres to respond to this idea of a changing Britain through the prism of British art and visual culture, using cogent examples wherever possible, and bringing to the fore the authors observations, understandings and positions within this rapidly developing context. For the re-launch of Visual Culture in Britain, the editors have invited, via the same process we went through in 2014, amounting to a series of ‘reflections on Visual Culture in Britain now, the role of journal to address some of these reflections, especially in an era of political upheaval and economic duress. To this end, what does Britain look like and how do we see these shifting landscapes through a multiplicity of mediums.’ This covers, of course, a sometime dramatic and often troubling context including, for example, the manipulation of Brexit, the murder of Jo Cox, the fire in Grenfell Tower, the escalation of Russian attacks in UK and elsewhere, the fires in the cathedral of Notre Dame and The Glasgow School of Art, Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson’s leaderships, Coronavirus, lockdown, protestors’ removal of the statue of Edward Colston, the death or downfall of UK monarchical figures, 2021’s warmest New Year’s Eve on record and so on. Any tone was admissible, rhetorical, humorous, discursive, contemplative, argumentative etc…</p

The rain, the river and the lake

The river feeds into the lake. The lake depends on the river and the river depends on the rain. This explains that for any development work to happen it relies on people, here being represented by the rain. The river represents the information that many organisations bring to the people. The lake symbolises the community, and how all the information that organisations bring to the people might sometimes be overwhelming to the carriers, such that at times it becomes difficult to share. When the river overflows then it becomes challenging for the community to utilize such information. Most of the time, organisations rely on a few gatekeepers in the community without reaching down to the core people within the community.Created in Mangochi District, Malawi, 2024This object is part of the Metaphors for Un/Making CSC Collection.</p

On the role of friction modifier additives in the oil control ring and piston liner contact

In-cylinder internal combustion engine parasitic frictional losses continue to be an area of interest to improve efficiency and reduce emissions. This study investigates the frictional behaviour at the oil control ring-cylinder liner conjunction of lubricants with anti-wear additives, varying dispersant concentration and a range of friction modifiers. Experiments are conducted at a range of temperatures on a cylinder liner with a nickel silicon carbide coating. A novel motored reciprocating tribometer, with a complete three-piece oil control ring and cylinder liner, was used to isolate the friction at the segment-liner interfaces. Four lubricants were tested, three with the same 3% dispersant concentration and 1% ZDDP anti-wear additive: the first with no friction modifier, the second with inorganic friction modifier (molybdenum dithiocarbamates), and the third with organic friction modifier (amide). A fourth lubricant with organic friction modifier with a 9% dispersant concentration was tested to compare the effect of the level of dispersant with the friction modifier. Results indicate that the inorganic friction modifier reduces friction comparatively to the other lubricants, showing the importance of friction modifier selection with anti-wear additives.</p

Resonant fully dielectric metasurfaces for ultrafast terahertz pulse generation

Metasurfaces represent a new frontier in materials science paving for unprecedented methods of controlling electromagnetic waves, with a range of applications spanning from sensing to imaging and communications. For pulsed terahertz (THz) generation, metasurfaces offer a gateway to tuneable thin emitters that can be utilized for large-area imaging, microscopy, and spectroscopy. In literature, THz-emitting metasurfaces generally exhibit high absorption, being based either on metals or on semiconductors excited in highly resonant regimes. Here, the use of a fully dielectric semiconductor exploiting morphology-mediated resonances and inherent quadratic nonlinear response is proposed. This system exhibits a remarkable 40-fold efficiency enhancement compared to the unpatterned at the peak of the optimized wavelength range, demonstrating its potential as a scalable emitter design.</p